Dealer Discounts on EVs

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Change of Heart

Dang, I must be getting old. It’s only been a few weeks, and I’ve
already forgotten how to operate this newfangled electronical
contraption.

My Focus Electric has been parked since the weekend before Christmas.
Didn’t need to drive to work until after the New Year since the company
shuts down the site for the holidays. And since traffic on the 405 was
very light for the first couple of weeks in January, the benefit of
using the HOV lane was diminished. Thus, I drove an ICE to work every
day for the first seven work days of 2014 in an attempt to save a few
bucks at lease termination – the Focus odo is already at 16000 miles
after only 11 months. Combine that with a gross miscalculation on my
part at a Ford dealership last February that resulted in my signing up
for a 12000 mile/year lease instead of one with an annual allotment of
18000 miles – back then I really did think that I’d have the discipline
to commute in an ICE instead of an EV for 2 days/week – and the
financial incentive to go back to driving an ICE every day for a month
or so is compelling. So that’s what I did, sort of.

Weird thing was that during those seven days in an ICE, I did not
miss the EV driving experience at all. Traffic was light, so my 2005
Mercedes C230 Sport Sedan was averaging 32 miles per gallon. Only one
trip to the gas station over a 10-day period, not enough to annoy me
quite yet. Twice in 10 days, that would be annoying. So I didn’t miss
the convenience of “refueling” at home and work. I also didn’t long for
the quietness of an electric powertrain. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog,
I actually enjoy the sound of Mercedes’ 1.8-liter supercharged
4-cylinder. Music to my ears, and I do prefer music over silence. What I
did miss are the bells and whistles on the Focus Electric that are
standard nowadays on any well-equipped vehicle – SiriusXM, Bluetooth
connectivity, pushbutton start, navigation, touchscreen controls, and so
on. The decade-old Mercedes, which seemed luxurious when I first bought
it as a lease return with 38000 miles in 2009, now seems like a spartan
relic from a distant past. But at 117000 miles it’s still a hoot to
drive… as surprisingly awesome as the Focus Electric is in the handling
department, the C230 Sport Sedan still feels more connected to the road,
perhaps in part because it’s so low to the ground. In fact, it’s so low
that my wife doesn’t like driving it. She says it feels like her butt
is dragging on the pavement, like a go-kart.

So I was planning on commuting with the C230 exclusively until the
end of this month, but that plan came to an end on Monday morning after
checking out the 405 traffic on sigalert.com… it said it would take
almost two hours to get to work. I hopped into the Focus Electric
instead of the C230, got in the HOV lane and whizzed by no less than
four fender benders, arriving at work in just over an hour.

Seems like I forgot how to drive efficiently, though, particularly in
maximizing regenerative braking. In an ICE, I tend to coast more and
brake later, rather than brake lightly sooner for more regen so that
binders don’t have to get into the act until we’re close to a dead stop.
I also tend to brake less before a turn in an ICE, letting the tires
scrub off the speed rather than braking before or during the turn; it’s a
habit I picked up after reading something years ago on hypermiling… if
you’re going to convert energy to heat, might as well use it to change
your direction faster. Why waste gas by braking before a turn and taking
a few seconds longer to travel the same distance? That all changes with
regenerative braking since it captures the energy and sticks it in a
battery rather than converting it to heat, dissipating it to the
atmosphere. So when I got back into the Focus I had to retrain myself to
slow down more, and sooner, when approaching a turn, since energy lost
through heat generated at the contact patch of each tire is lost
forever. It took a couple of days to get used to braking earlier and
lighter to achieve 99% regen on a round-trip commute.

It’s become very hard to justify keeping the C230 around. My original
plan to drive it to work twice a week has failed miserably after
installing those HOV lane stickers on the Focus, so the over-mileage
situation on the lease will only get worse for the next two years. I
started taking the C230 to used car lots to see how much cash they’d
turn it into, and am currently shopping for an HOV-qualified replacement
to share commuting duties with my beloved Focus Electric and to cover
the occasional treks that go beyond the FFE’s range. Top of the list? A
2014 Chevy Volt.